Aurumorphia
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: Gen, AU, prequel to Golden Morning and the rest of the Children of the Sun series. The universe sends a spirit of great power to protect Harry Potter. The slow formation of Harry's golden familiar over a period of years. COMPLETE.


**Title:** Aurumorphia  
 **Disclaimer:** J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.  
 **Pairing:** Mentions of James/Lily, otherwise gen  
 **Rating:** PG  
 **Content Notes:** Slight angst, canonical character deaths and child abuse, AU  
 **Wordcount:** 2400  
 **Summary:** The universe sends a spirit of great power to guard the infant Harry Potter. The slow formation of Harry's golden familiar over a period of years.  
 **Author's Notes:** Another of my July Celebration fics, a prequel to my Children of the Sun series, written at the suggestion of mystic_magic_88 for a one-shot from Golden's POV on how he formed. The title is a combination of Latin and Greek that means, roughly, "Golden form" or "Golden shaping."

 **Aurumorphia**

The spirit moved slowly. There were many tunnels around it in the long, shining emerald grass of this place before the worlds. But that it saw the place as grass already gave it a clue what form it would take. Not a winged one, rushing through the skies. Something lower, closer to the ground. Something that crawled.

The tunnels parted around it, sliding and twisting, full of stars. The spirit paused to consider them. There were so many it could take, and there would be advantages to all of them. It could guard innocent mages, ones destined for blood-soaked lives, ones that would die young, and ones that would become great healers. There was not always a choice, but here, there was.

In the end, though, only one beckoned it strongly, as was ever the case.

The spirit slid through the grass, and already the tunnel closing in around it, whirling with stars of gold and wonder, was beginning to shape it. Any suggestions of limbs faded away. It crawled on its belly. It _slithered_. It would make a serpent in this lifetime, and the thought pleased it. It had been long since it had been anything other than a mammal.

Further and further into the tunnel it crawled, and other constraints hedged it around. It would appear as male to others, and it accepted that. Now the spirit was _he_ , and he probed ahead with a delicate magic that would manifest as a flickering tongue.

He touched the soul of his mage.

The spirit had been through this before, as had all the spirits. He had borne many names, been many colors, lived with many humans and mourned them when they died. Traces of his previous incarnations followed him like mist and dusk and identified him to other spirits when they met.

Never before had he sensed a soul like the one he touched now, and he was fiercely glad that this one would belong to him. No wonder this particular tunnel had attracted him. This one was strong and shining, and there was the potential of self-restraint twined about him. He _might_ cause trouble, he _might_ lose that restraint depending on how he grew up; the spirit had seen more than one potential twisted out of true, although not usually the ones he guarded and loved. But it would take much to _make_ the mage lose his.

He would use his power thoughtfully and wisely, and within the chains that he placed on himself, if all went as it should.

The spirit was partially there to make sure that all went as it should.

He settled, a formless mist, potential himself, around the soul of his mage—his kind never manifested themselves before their mages' bodies were out of infanthood—and waited.

* * *

Being with his mage's family was wonderful.

His mage was called Harry Potter. He was an expressive child who laughed and clapped his hands when he saw magic, which reassured the spirit twined around him like invisible smoke right now. At least that meant he wouldn't be afraid of his own power the way that some children were.

Harry's father was called James Potter, and his familiar had taken the form of a gigantic silver stag called Prongs. Prongs spent a lot of time sniffing Harry and then jumping away from the cot, kicking up his hooves and flapping his ears, specifically to make Harry laugh. He greeted the spirit, too, of course, but as far as they could tell, they had never met before under any guise, and had few memories to share as yet.

It was different with Lily Potter's familiar, Serena as she was called in this lifetime. She was a silver dolphin who, like all aquatic familiars far from the sea, swam through the air to accompany her mage, and she recognized the spirit at once. They had once been part of the same ritual circle in the country now called Nigeria, when the spirit had been a bronze bat, familiar to a powerful woman who didn't work well with others, and Serena had been a silver giraffe and familiar to the most powerful male mage of the tribe. Here, they would spend more time together, and the spirit found himself glad of it.

The Potters lived isolated, for reasons that the adult mages spoke of in hushed tones, but the spirit could go undetectably where he wanted, as long as it wasn't far from Harry. There was a prophecy that targeted his mage. A powerful wizard—as they were apparently called in this part of the world—was hunting him.

When the spirit heard this, he went back and coiled himself protectively around Harry, imitating the habits of the serpent he would become. No one would destroy _his_ wizard.

* * *

There came the night when someone tried.

The defenses around the cottage were ripped aside like fragile paper, and the spirit heard James shouting for Lily to take Harry and run. She grabbed Harry and ran up to the first floor of the cottage, Serena swimming circles around her, but the spirit remained downstairs, unable to do anything but watch.

But someone should witness what his extended senses told him would be death.

Lord Voldemort was a pale creature with a silver familiar next to him, a rearing pit viper that the spirit identified as a _wrongness_ at once. Voldemort had done certain spells and rituals forbidden to mages with good reason, and his familiar had _gone along with them._ The spirit tried to hiss at her and recall her to some sense of her crimes, but she had fallen too far. She could not even hear the words of unmanifested familiars.

James and Prongs fought, but it was no good. Voldemort hit James with a Killing Curse, and the silver serpent linked her fangs around Prongs's left front leg and bit down, pumping him full of that _wrong_ venom. The spirit was witness to the last minute as Prongs's eyes glazed and he looked to the side.

 _I will take care of Harry,_ the spirit told him.

Prongs lowered his antlers once, and then he vanished into a trailing storm of silver motes at the same moment as James's soul fled from his body.

The spirit flew up the stairs to the nursery. Harry was in his cot, whimpering and reaching towards his mother with wide eyes. Serena was swimming around her, her tail clattering against the bars of the cot. Lily stood with her arms spread in front of her son. She shivered, but not all her terror could make her move.

The spirit admired her. As he slipped into the cot and coiled around Harry again, he wished he could change what he knew the outcome would be.

"Stand aside, you silly girl, stand aside now."

"No, not Harry—Take me! Not Harry!"

The spirit slowly lifted his head. The offer to spare Lily Potter's life was unusual, from what he knew of Lord Voldemort. Lily's offer of her life in return was not unusual in the sense that no one would expect a mother to do otherwise for her child, but he wondered if Voldemort could feel the subtle tightening of magic around the room, the indication that the offers were attracting attention.

Thrice Lord Voldemort told Lily Potter to stand aside. Thrice she offered her life instead. And then Lord Voldemort killed her with the Killing Curse, and in the moments before he did, Serena swam into her witch and merged her essence with Lily's, giving up her life before she had to.

The spirit would have backed off, if he was Lord Voldemort's familiar. But they had both fallen so far they didn't even recognize _that._ Serena and Lily died together, and the spirit bid his friend a sad farewell.

Then Voldemort moved forwards and aimed his wand at Harry's forehead.

The whir of magic in the room tightened. Lily had offered her life. Voldemort had taken it. That he should defy the bargain and aim at Harry instead, and in the moments after a mother and her familiar had made a sacrifice of love for a child at the same time, meant he was foolish, for all his intelligence and strength.

And the spirit knew, in that moment, what color he would be.

He reared up invisibly in front of Harry, and when the Killing Curse came flying, it hit the spirit's power—Harry's power, drawn from his soul—and the bonds of the magical bargain, and the hovering magic of Lily's and an immortal spirit's sacrifice.

A trifold shield turned Voldemort's curse back on him with all the fury he had used to utter it. The spirit heard him shriek, and felt his soul be hurled from his body, sent flying in the company of his corrupted familiar.

But he did not leave _entirely_. And the spirit understood one of the things that Voldemort had done to himself, when he felt a tiny piece of the unstable soul fly away from its bearer and lodge in Harry's.

The spirit wrapped himself around the weeping Harry and set to work soothing him and containing the shard of soul. If he had not been destined to be gold, this would have been impossible, but then, so would defending a wizard so young from the Killing Curse in the first place, so he wasn't bothered by it.

* * *

He _was_ bothered when a wild-eyed man with a bronze wolfhound by his side showed up briefly, only to immediately chase after the man he apparently believed had betrayed the Potters in the first place. And then a half-giant came in with a tin dog at his side, and a much older wizard with a golden phoenix on his shoulder.

The spirit tried to speak to all the familiars, to tell them what had happened and ask them for help. It didn't work. The wolfhound was there too briefly to hear him, the tin dog was too shaken with his wizard's grief, and the phoenix—

The spirit did not understand. He had reached out to the phoenix, they were on a similar power level, and they should have understood each other even if the spirit didn't recognize the particular one who had become the old wizard's familiar. But it was as if there was a wall there, a slippery one of ice that he could not climb.

In the end, the half-giant took Harry away, and the spirit had to follow. He tried to speak with every familiar he encountered, including, just before he and Harry were left on the doorstep of a non-magical habitation, the bronze tomcat stalking in agitation around a bespectacled witch. None of them heard.

He knew then that he was too weakened from the defense he had helped Harry muster. But he vowed silently to do something about it in the morning.

* * *

As it turned out, they were left in the horrible non-magical household, and those other familiars were the last ones the spirit saw for years.

The aunt and uncle who should have loved Harry treated him abominably. They left him in a dirty nappy when he needed to be changed, they ignored his cries of hunger and his need to be held, and they forced him to sleep in a small cupboard under the stairs. The spirit could do nothing, because he had not yet manifested and until he had, he could protect Harry only from magical harm.

It was most frustrating, but it made him all the more determined. He _had_ chosen the right tunnel, the right soul. He _was_ going to defend his mage.

And then came the moment when things shifted. Harry's cries because of his dirty nappy were ear-piercing. The spirit wrapped himself as tightly as he could around Harry, trying to radiate warmth as best he could when he was only a magical extension of Harry's soul.

Then—

Then he was suddenly heavy, tumbling to the ground and off the tiny bed they'd put Harry on, suddenly coiling muscles clad in golden scales, suddenly the shining anaconda that he'd been meant to be. Even in his surprise, he tilted himself sideways to catch and cradle Harry before he could be hurt in the fall.

He spent a moment with his tongue darting, and Harry, held in his coils, staring at him with shocked, wide eyes.

Then Harry began to cry again, and the serpent began to use magic.

In a few seconds, Harry's nappy was dry, his skin was lined in warmth, and the cupboard door had fallen open. The serpent deposited Harry on the bed with a flick of his tail and cautiously extended the rest of himself into the kitchen. From the noise, the non-magical people were in the other room entertaining themselves with their picture box.

The serpent wrapped part of himself around the door of their cold box and yanked it open. He found soft cheese, softer cuts of meat, and some fruit wrapped in paper. He carried them back to Harry in seconds, considering it more important to watch his wizard stuff his mouth with what he could eat than close the door of the cold box. But eventually he went back and did that, too. Now this was their home as well. They were going to live better, and the non-magical people would _not_ mistreat Harry anymore.

Harry, his belly full, clasped his hands around the middle of the serpent and went to sleep wrapped in his coils. That was his greatest desire, to be held, and the serpent fulfilled it.

And in the morning, the Dursleys shrieked when they found Harry well-fed and clean, but it wasn't as though they mattered. Or could harm Harry again, now that his serpent had manifested. Being non-magical, they couldn't detect him, and they kept _trying_ to hurt Harry and take things away from him. But that didn't matter, either. The serpent found some amusement and some practice in magic, fending their pitiful attempts off.

* * *

When he was three years old, Harry named the serpent Golden.

He sometimes regretted that later and tried to change it. But Golden refused to let him. He had never desired another name.

As he would never desire another wizard.

 **The End.**


End file.
